Activity Is Not The Same Thing As Achievement – Making Your Actions Matter And Live More Intentionally
Activity is not the same as Achievement
Introduction
Imagine you’re on the front lines of a war zone and the general says ‘GO’!!! Everybody runs a random direction and 20 minutes later they are out of breath, lost, and confused. Kind of sounds like life sometimes, doesn’t it? You wake up, frantically run around all day trying to keep all the balls in the air, then crawl into bed wondering what the heck happened with your time. You feel like you were SO BUSY, but little progress was actually made toward any of your real goals.
“Don’t mistake activity for achievement” -John Wooden (Former UCLA Basketball Coach)
I particularly like this quote. According to the almighty Google algorithm its attributes to John Wooden but I’ve heard it inside business circles for years. At its core, it’s basically saying ‘Make sure your actions matter’.
Now this is certainly easier said than done, especially in a world filled with notifications, texts, emails, news feeds, and scheduled Zoom calls. Everyone wants a piece of your attention and none of them care about your personal goals. Below is my process for achieving success in many aspects of life.
Know your goals
If you don’t know where you are going, how are you going to make decisions in your best interest when everybody is trying to get you to work on their ‘problem of the day’? I’m very intentional with this.
Have a 5-year plan
Map out where you want to be in 5 years. This can be as simple as 3-5 points such as:
I want to own my own business
I want to be debt free
I want to own a home
I want to retire by age 40
These goals don’t necessarily need to be done in 5 years (although sometimes that is highly desirable). The intent of this exercise is to identify what is truly important to you. What is so core to you that even in 5+ years it will still be a priority? This will help you take a step back and look at the big picture away from the noise of what’s going on in this moment.
I personally really like to use the S.M.A.R.T. Goal System which helps clarify your goals by ensuring they are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time bounded.
Set your 1-year milestones
I find it helpful when chasing large ambitious goals, to break them down into 1-year milestones. Again, keeping it simple is key here, but be specific. The milestone target should be measurable and have an achievement date.
Think of your 5 year goals as your “Vision or Mission Statement” and your milestone goals as the roadmap with logical stops along the way you need to work k toward to ultimately get to your far off destination.
Let’s say you want to start your own business It might look something like this:
Year 1
Identify market nitch
Write business plan
Identify key stake holders
Set up frame work – license, website, pilot tests etc.
Secure funding (if needed, many great businesses start with no outside funding)
Year 2
Launch business
Identify and build team
Secure product/ develop services
Identify and connect with customers
Year 3
Review product sales
Identify opportunities for growth (additional products or services)
Build customer base
Improve quality / fix what isn’t working well
Year 4
Grow team as needed
Partner with other businesses to offer additional value
Establish formal procedures and policies to be used when scaling company
Year 5
Open additional locations/expand to additional platforms.
The purpose of outlining your milestone plan is 2-fold:
It takes tasks that don’t need to be done yet off your plate. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and get ahead of yourself. Break the goal down into steps that can be achieved and execute them. Worry about the next steps when you get there (but be aware of them to make sure you lay the foundation you need first).
By having intermediate steps that need to be done by a specific date, it moves you into an action-oriented mindset vs day dreaming about what you’d like to have in 5 years. You have tasks that need to get done today and can clearly see how it gets you to where you want to be in 5 years.
I review my yearly milestone plan every month or 2 and make shorter term goals as needed. Every year in January I review my 5 year plan and adjust the 1 year milestones as needed. This process doesn’t take me very long. The point is to set the direction for the year so you can start doing the intentional daily actions to make your goals a reality.
"I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." - Eisenhower Principle
Start your day off right
While I was working in a high pressure corporate setting, I frequently found that as soon as I woke up my day was already being pulled in directions that I hadn’t intended. The boss has an urgent email, your spouse needs something picked up after work, an employee called out sick, or that urgent delivery you need is going to be late. Before you know it, you’re in reaction mode just trying to keep the balls in the air and making no progress on your fundamental objectives for the day.
A simple practice I do every morning before I check my phone or interact with anyone (ideally with a cup of coffee) is to write out a quick to-do list, you could even do this in the evening before after you’ve had a chance to decompress from the day and clear your mind, I personally like mornings as it’s when i’m clear headed.
This list is normally 5-10 items long and represents what I feel is important to have done by the end of the day with an eye on the bigger picture. This helps me be more intentional about my day and not let the needs/wants of others get in the way of what actions I need to take to get closer to my goals.
If your daily To-Do list longer than 10 items you should strongly consider what items you need to say no to, put on the back burner, or delegate to someone else. Our days rarely go exactly as planned so you need to be realistic with your time, if you can recognize you have too much on your plate you can more effectively identify what’s just noise or if your list is truly all need to be successful it might be time work on adding some team members.
Saying ‘NO’ so you can say ‘YES’ when it matters
Now that you’re armed with your daily To-Do list, you have to make time for the things that you’ve identified as important to you. The easiest way to do this is by saying ‘NO’. If, for example, your boss wants you to stay late you might respond with “I’m sorry but I have to do X tonight.”. Or that thing your spouse asked you to pick up, you might tell them “I can grab that this weekend when I’m over there, I don’t have time to do this today.”. By creating clarity about what your priorities are for the day, you are able to carve out time to accomplish the work you need, to move the needle on what’s most important to achieve success.
Give yourself time for ‘head space’
Just like everybody, I’m human and I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life. However, I’ve noticed a pattern. Whenever I was tired, overworked, and stressed-out I tended to make poor decisions that impacted my future. I’ve adopted the practice of, once a week, taking an hour or so away from everything - no phone, no computer, and ideally outdoors to clear my mind to just think and let the mind wander some. Usually the first 30 minutes are noise about what you need to get done that day, or a frustration you’ve recently had. But as you calm your mind, you’ll naturally start to think about the things that really matter to you. Are you getting closer to your goals? Could you be doing better? What’s working? What’s not working? Is there a the bigger picture, or on the obstical you’ve recently been stuck on. What do I need to accomplish next? How could this challenge be overcome? These quiet moments are where my best ideas or solutions have come from. These ideas that can change your life. In a world that is so busy with so many things pulling on our attention, sometimes what we really need is a little space to explore our thoughts and dream big.
Put the work in
At the end of the day none of your goals will happen on their own. You have to make the time for them, and put the work in. The process I’ve outlined above is what I do to make sure my efforts effectively move the needle on what’s truly important. To make sure my time isn’t sucked up chasing the ‘problem of the day’ or simply reacting to what others need from me. It has allowed me to accomplish significantly more, while simultaneously taking stuff off my plate that isn’t important.
The other benefit of this process is by protecting your time you’re able to create the boundaries with others who may be hijacking your time which will hopefully reduce the number of “wishlist items” that people try to push onto you.
Final thoughts
The guy who invented the pet rock made $15 million dollars. There is nothing about this idea that somebody else couldn’t have done. The difference was, he took deliberate action and executed! No matter what your goals are, execution is the key to success!
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